teaching and interested the children as no ordinary teacher could. His methods are not for every one.
Tolstoy's classes came to an end after two years, because he was interfered with by the Government; but he revived them at intervals during his life, and there is no doubt that his views on education helped to make teaching in Russia more reasonable and natural, and put fresh ideas about it into people's heads.
Tolstoy's only companion at this time was his aunt Tatiana, but in 1862, when he was thirty-four, he married Miss Sophia Behrs, who was only eighteen. He had known her as a little girl.
Tolstoy now settled down to a very happy life—the life, indeed, which had been his ideal, and which he had described as such in a letter to his aunt, when quite a young man. He pictures himself living with his wife at Yasnaya—
A gentle creature, kind and affectionate, she has the
same love for you as I have; you live upstairs in the big
house, in what used to be Grandmamma's room; the whole
house is as it was in Papa's time. . . . I take Papa's
place, though I despair of ever deserving it. My wife
that of Mamma; the children take ours. If they made
me Emperor of Russia or gave me Peru—in a word, if
a fairy came with her wand asking me what I wished
for, I should reply that I only wished that this dream
may become reality.
And all this actually came to pass. Aunt Tatiana,
when Tolstoy married, continued to live with him.
